


Firedream

by ThatDamnKennedyKid



Series: The Winged Jedi [20]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Original Character(s), Prophetic Dreams, Wingfic, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 02:14:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17572370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatDamnKennedyKid/pseuds/ThatDamnKennedyKid
Summary: Across the galaxy, Anakin has a dream.





	Firedream

**Author's Note:**

> How about that? Two updates in twenty-four hours.

She's little, the girl looking at him. 

She's only a halfway up his thigh, her hair and wings the soft black of childhood. She's very, very young. Little, in all ways, but her eyes are old. She looks at him like she knows him. Not like the youngling at the Temple, either. She looks at him like Obi-Wan, like Rex, like Ahsoka, like Padmé. 

"Hello." She smiles at him anyway. She's dressed in beige, an imitation of youngling robes but different. It's lighter, more aerial, with black that normally wouldn't be there. 

"Hello." He answers. 

"I know you." She says, smirking now. "Ani."

"Yeah. Who are you?"

"Briikase." She replies. 

"Where are you from?"

"I'll be born on Stewjon. Who knows where I began." Her grin gets impish. 

"Be born?"

She turns away, beckoning him to follow. "Come on. I want to show you something."

* * *

"Hello?" He calls out into the meadow. It's serene here, with distant chirping and the pervasive feeling of  _life_. 

"Hello there."

He spins around, facing a girl Ezra's age. She's got black hair reflecting coming colour. Her wings are folded against her back, the black-grey feathers lifted and ready to fall. She's molting, just beginning her path to adulthood. She looks at him knowingly, mischievously, and smirks. 

"What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same thing." She replies, playing coy. "But I know you don't have dreams like this."

"Dream?"

"This is because you saw them fighting over Ani, Caleb." She swished the tails of her robes, beige with a black jumpsuit underneath and clean white boots. "Don't worry, though. The effect won't last."

He's so confused, by all of it. He doesn't know what she means, or who she is.

"You don't see me. We don't meet." She chirps, sweet and fluttery, like she can't wait to meet the sky. "You have your time full with Hera and the boys. That's okay, though. We're meeting now."

"I don't understand. Who are you?"

"I'm a  _besbe_ , just waiting to fly." She turns and wanders away, humming. "Be good to Ezra!"

* * *

It's morning. The air on the mountain is cold. 

He walks out of the cave and finds her there. She's tall, just like her parents. Her hair never lost its dark colour, but gained a sheen of rose, not quite red, not quite blonde. It hangs down her back, the part favouring her right side. Her wings are glorious, a shimmering gold with an undertone of brass. She's wearing the armour - his armour - with a modified chestplate and flexcore. The paint is pristine, the helmet sitting on the small trunk of possessions she has. 

He doesn't know how he knows this about her, but he does. He knows her. 

"Mornings from this mountain are a sight I will never tire of." She says, breaking the silence. "Just to feel the world, warming awake. Amazing."

He stops next to her and looks up. 

She looks just like her father; high cheek bones, strong jawline and swirling amber eyes. She's softer than he was, younger and not so sharp everywhere. She wasn't cut for war, she was swaddled and raised and shown how to fly. 

"This isn't real."

"You're right." She reaches down to pet his hair and he realizes where the softness comes from. The same place the weapon on her belt does. "It's a dream."

"Who are you?"

"You know who I am. You can see it." She quirks up her lips. She's older, wiser and blooded, but she's still smiling. She didn't inherit the pain. 

He nods, at a loss for words. 

"Are they . . . happy?"

She pauses, then laughs. It's bright and ringing. "You could say that."

"Good. Then there's nothing else I need to know."

She inclines her head to him, grinning. "Never change, Ezra."

* * *

The nestling leads him into the world beyond his black bubble. He recognizes the topography of Av'ale, the skid marks still trenched in the soil even though the grasses have long since regrown. 

"You said you'll be born on Stewjon. This isn't Stewjon."

Briikase continues on. "I know. But Stewjon is special. Av'ale is just nice. I though you might like to feel nice again."

His heart constricts. It reminds him of Naboo, of the beach he was married on, of the woman he threw away, the potential he lost. 

"No!" She hops and flicks his forehead before landing. "None of that! I don't like them!"

"Like what?" He mutters, rubbing his forehead. She was a strong little thing. 

"The darkness. It's so mean. It tries to make you believe those things and they're not true." She pouts, undeniably adorable on her earthen complexion. "They're not true. But if it makes you believe it is, you'll never leave."

"What did you want to show me?"

"Oh!" She grabs his hand and it's like being wrapped in a warm blanket, slowly creeping up his arm when he hadn't even known he'd been chilled. "Over here!"

She leads him into a small house and they come out in the Hall of a Thousand Fountains. She leads him over to the largest, laziest one, pointing to a braid. 

On the left is the shining copper and tell-tale length of Obi-Wan's Padawan braid, the one he still keeps rolled up neatly in his small chest of things. Next is his own, maintaining some of his old blonde hue, of middling length. Lastly is one made of steel baubles - Ahsoka's braid. They're all braided together, interwoven. Holding them together at the top and the bottom are the pins Obi-Wan used to keep her bun in place with. Wedged in the bottom is a little grey-black feather. 

"Do you like it? I added my own feather, because it's a sign of childhood too."

His hand tremble holding it, overwhelmed by the sentimentality of it all. He wants this, so badly. He wants it all back. And he wants this little feather to join their braids. 

"I love it." He manages, trying to stop himself from crying. 

"Good." She beams. "It's for you."

He folds it against his chest, gripping it tightly. "Thank you."

"You put in the work for those braids." She says, the amber in her eyes sparking copper fire in the sunlight streaming through the windows above. "They're yours. I just found them and thought you might want them back."

She pat's his head, then wanders off again. He's quick to follow, finding her leading him to the tiered inner gardens. It's intact here, but empty. It feels like Jedi will appear at any moment. It's charged with the calm kinetics meditation and friendly chatter bring a space. 

"You're the variable." She says suddenly, hopping up onto a ledge to stand at a similar height. "You're the one no one can predict, that even the Force cannot control."

"How do you know this?"

"I'm so new, I'm barely separate." She's very serious, her wings ruffling. "But I am strong, and I can feel you like a gravity well. I'm not a goddess born, but I am very special. Special people come together because no one else can understand."

"There is no other Chosen One." He spits, venom welling on his tongue. 

She cups his face in her small hands, staring him down. "You were chosen by the Force, but others are singularly chosen by their own gods. It's not the same - unique ones cannot be - but the pain echoes in staccato. You walk parallel, milestones and tragedy given the same markers, but never to meet, starting and ending different places. She understands."

"You're talking about Obi-Wan."

She leans back, looking up at the ceiling and studying the smog-shuttered sky of Coruscant. "She understands. More than you know. More than she let you know."

"Why? Why would she hide this from me?"

"Because you already hurt so much." She meet his gaze again, and the world tilts.

 | | | 

Awareness comes to him again and he's on a mountain top, sitting in a meditation pose in the snow. 

Briikase is a woman standing before him, arms crossed and looking out over the Stewjon wildlands. Her armour glints, the yellow stripes stark but overshadowed by the way her wings dazzle in the pre-light of dawn. Looking at her, he knows very suddenly who Obi-Wan's been hiding all these years. Who she handed her heart to. 

The man the Emperor threw into the unyielding blades of an industrial fan. 

"She'd always been alone." Briikase says, without looking over. "She was entirely alone when she got you. She wanted to save you from pain. She didn't tell you because she loved you, because she didn't want you to suffer for her. You were the first person she truly loved. He came later, but brought out a different love."

"And you?"

She uncrowded her arms and turns to face him. She cuts an imposing figure, strong and brave and proud. She's her father's daughter. She's of quality like her mother. 

"I'm a product of that devotion." She comes and kneels next to him, her wings raised to give her space. "Your future is uncertain. He wants to keep you, to hoard you and use you. She wishes for you to be free again, to fly and laugh and sing with her."

He chokes on his words, his heart yearning. 

"You can come home."

* * *

Anakin woke up in a cold sweat, clutching his heart and blinking back tears. 

He throws off the covers, stumbling over to the small box he kept in the corner of his room. He tears through it, finding his Padawan braid wrapped up snugly with Obi-Wan's. 

He pressed them both into the skin of his bare chest, sliding down to the floor. He tried to hold back the tears, but he can't. 

He cried and cried and cried, pouring all the pain out, all the regret and the anguish. He let himself free of his mental walls, pushing out as far as he could go and staining it with his grief. He didn't even realize there was so much of it. He didn't allow himself to wallow in it, but finally express it all. 

He laid on the floor, exhausted but calmer, more balanced. The entirety of the Force surrounds him, light and dark, and it washed through him. 

The Emperor's displeasure at his release is clear, especially from so close, but he can also feel the seething resentment roiling underneath, the jealousy at the wild strength his apprentice has that he does not. It rubbed against him like sand, gritty, unpleasant and unshakable. 

But he can also feel Obi-Wan, just on the very edges of his consciousness, twinkling like a distant star. She felt him too, he's sure of it. She beckoned him, tugged the boy from Tattooine who snuggled against her in the cold of space and never looked back. She's in tune with the animal inside him that lives on adrenaline, that wants to have her fling him at the sky. That's a part of him that will never bow to the Emperor, that rankles whenever it's given a command. 

He laid on the floor of his chambers for hours beyond his counting, just feeling and trying to understand himself. 

And yet, no matter what he tried to convince himself of, it always comes back to the same place. When he tries to see in the darkness, he's only more drawn to her distant light. 

* * *

Kanan woke up with a headache that felt like a hangover. He had no idea what the hell that girl in his dream was on about. 

"What's wrong?" Hera asked, rolling over sleepily. 

"Nothin'." He snuggled back up with her and decided to ignore it. 

* * *

Ezra saw Obi-Wan and Cody talking quietly when he entered the cafeteria. He felt a whisper of the aura from his dream, spinning to look for it. It passed him again and he realized, with a start, that it had come from within the Jedi Master. 

It was all real. 

**Author's Note:**

> Briikase [Bree-kah-say] - Happy  
> Besbe [Bes-bay] - kit (slang)


End file.
